Menika van der Poorten

Menika van der Poorten was born in London and grew up between London and Colombo. She settled in Sri Lanka as an adult and here she has built a career in photography for the past twenty-five years working in the fields of documentary photography, arts administration, curating and teaching. Menika studied photography at the John Cass School of Art (now the London Metropolitan University) (1987-89) and at the University of Westminster (1995-97). Menika van der Poorten’s photographic practice is informed by her experience of living between different cultures and communities. Identity, place and the ‘marking of presence’ is a recurring theme in her work. Her work focuses upon communities that experience displacement and are in a ‘state of flux’. Her photographs are inspired by her own family history, and mixed-race descendants of European settlers who came to Sri Lanka during the British colonial times. Her aim is to contextualise the ‘presence and present’ of the Eurasian community through their stories. The research has involved photography, interviews and collecting material on the Eurasian community (particularly those that had a connection with the tea and rubber plantation sector).

More recently, Menika has been documenting her mother’s life and legacy. The photographs for Tonight No Poetry Will Serve form a tribute and are a part of this collection.

Menika’s select solo and group exhibitions are Boys Own, and Portraits of pre-adolescent Boys- growing up, Red Dot Gallery, Theertha Artist’s Collective, Colombo (2009), Timepieces, Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo (2006), Home Is Where the Heart Is, National Art Gallery, Colombo (2002), UNHCR commission on displaced Muslim women in Puttalam (2002), The Real and the Imagined, Dhaka Art Summit (2016), and Whorled Expectations, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014).

Menika van der Poorten lives and works in Colombo, Sri Lanka.